Rudd seeks path to political survival

Kevin Rudd
’s political problem – and the government’s – for the past two months has been the crushing of its credibility in the wake of its decision to dump the emissions trading scheme.

The visceral turning on the Prime Minister we have witnessed has led many to suggest he is a damaged brand who can’t recover and that, as a result, Labor’s only chance of winning the election is to switch to
Julia Gillard
.

Even last night, the Gillard story wouldn’t die, with former Queensland premier
Peter Beattie
’s observation that Rudd should prepare the ground for her to take over “in the long term".

Yet the past 72 hours have shown there is a path to political survival beyond a simple revival of the electorate’s love affair with Kevin. That path lies with getting on with governing and showing that you can actually land some of your promises.

Looking like a government tends to make voters think of you as a government. They might think your leader is a phony who overegged his promises. But they will also see a government that is delivering.

The announcement of a deal with
Telstra
on the national broadband plan might not spark a revival of the government’s fortunes, but it should not be underestimated either.

In the midst of the resources tax brawl some weeks ago, a Labor MP was fretting that the NBN deal was more important to the government’s fortunes because of the question mark that the undone deal left over Telstra’s share price. There were lots more mum and dad investors in Telstra than Rio Tinto, he argued.

(He would no doubt be pleased by the Telstra share price rise yesterday.)

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The Telstra deal, paid parental leave, welfare reform, and agreements signed with China have all helped change the mood.

Labor’s big election promises in 2007 were on health, broadband, Work Choices and climate change.

Climate change is where the government now knows it has to do something to undo some of the damage its April decision caused.

But with just a few major promises now delivered, the “genius" of
Tony Abbott
’s strategy of saying nothing about anything is exposed as one that cannot work for much longer. He is going to have to have some policy out there, too.

But it says much for modern politics that nothing has probably changed the mood in Canberra as much as stabilising poll numbers, particularly given some of the really silly stories that have been written anticipating yesterday’s Newspoll.

Labor’s big poll slump occurred after the April ETS decision. According to Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote dropped from 43 per cent to 35 per cent between April 18 and May 2. The Newspoll released yesterday showed that it is still there.

Kevin Rudd’s approval rating dropped at the same time from 50 per cent to 36 per cent late in May.

Let’s be frank. They are terrible numbers.

But the fact the primary vote result did not replicate the even worse 33 per cent recorded in the Nielsen poll two weeks ago has removed some of the sense of crisis around the government.

The revised resource profits tax is close to completion.

Yet the government was yesterday enjoying the relative luxury of not feeling under pressure to announce it because of the visit by the Chinese Vice-President – and because it had its NBN deal to sell.

Three more days of Parliament to go. Then Labor goes into the winter break seeking to rebuild its standing with voters and in the polls.